With A Little Help From My Friends
by Angsty Anime Star
Summary: Sixty-six, maybe more, one-shots, each inspired by a song from the random list put together by my friends. Features all characters, pairings, situations, and everything my twisted little mind can come up with while I should be asleep. My 50th fic!
1. Chapter 1

_Number 1:_

_Song- Love Me For Me by Ashlee Simpson_

_A.N- Max/Prudence friendship. Slight mentions of Jude/Lucy, Prudence/Rita, Prudence/Max. Takes place after Max is out of the hospital and Prudence returns, but before Jude comes back._

_Lyrics that influence this fic the most- "Don't care where you think you've been, and how you're getting over. If you think you've got me down, just wait it gets much colder" "Here I am, as perfect as i'm ever gonna be" "Shut up, come back. No i didn't really mean to say that" "I'm mixed up, so what? Yea you want me so you're messed up too" "My head is spinnin' but my heart is in the right place. Sometimes it has to have it's self a little earthquake"

* * *

_

"Pru, come here?" The voice was soft and raspy, and it all sounded like one word, but Prudence understood perfectly well, stopped in her tracks, and turned into the room without a second thought.

She offered a small smile and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Max?"

He was leaning over, staring at the floor. At first look with how he'd been acting lately, the others would have been worried, but Prudence just seemed to know things were okay right now. He didn't respond to her though, and she inched closer. "What's up?"

She refused to treat him any differently than she had before. It was "What's up?" and not "Are you alright?". The others could stick to the tender love and care. Every single one of them knew that they all hated it, but at certain times, making things seem normal was just too hard. She could be compassionate without being different.

Finally he looked up and offered her a smile. It was small and drained, but so distinctly Max that it made her beam. He shrugged a little, carelessly. It was so much like him to call someone over with no clear meaning or request. Only, had it been Before, he would have suggested something rash and fun right about now.

But now he didn't. And Prudence felt obligated to uphold the tradition. "You want to go out?" she offered hopelessly. "Grab a drink, flirt around…" she trailed off. Just the mention of theses things made her think about Rita. And not the good parts.

The two had broken things off last week after some less than pleasant complications and she still hadn't told anyone. Normally, Before, she would talk to Max about these things, but now they hardly talked at all, and when they did she surely wasn't going to start complaining. It was her turn to be there for him.

However, keen-sense to Prudence as always, Max pursed a deeper frown at her shifted expression. "You okay?"

Apparently role-reversal wasn't one of their best skills.

She was roughly pulled from her thoughts and stammered, "Y-yeah." She smiled again, a little too fake, with a little too much hope. Prudence wasn't good at bottling up her feelings, and she didn't have a way to express them. Not through art or music or anything like that at least. She'd kill for those talents. She'd also kill to have Max back to himself again.

When the two had first met, it was a one night stand. She was broken and he was cocky and it was never anything more. Once they were done with that, they really got to know eachother as people. They had become the closest in the house actually. And it was nice. They'd spend hours laughing about, and at, Jude and Lucy, and he was the first one to know about her crush on Sadie.

She didn't realize she'd sighed aloud during the stream of memories.

He seemed timid to ask again, but finally Max broke the tense silence. "You wanna talk?"

She wanted to shake her head no, for his sake. For her sake, she wanted to cry or hug him or have some form of being assured things could be normal again. He didn't talk like that anymore, and she didn't want to push him.

But, emotions getting the better of her, she instead replied, "Do you?"

There was a beat of silence, because he knew she wanted him to tell her things, things he just wasn't ready to say. Almost awkwardly, he put an arm over her shoulder and rubbed her back. "I'll listen."

Certain people were constants, always there for one another. Prudence took the step in realizing that things between her and Max will probably never be the same again. He'll probably never be the same again. And neither would she. But they were trying. And for her, that was plenty enough.


	2. Chapter 2

_Number 2:_

_Song- Here I Am by Renee Sandstrom_

_A.N- I wrote about Lucy!... You'll soon see that I tend not to write about her as much as the others. If you really really like Lucy, i apologize and I'll try to incorporate her more into future chapters as well. But here's a Lucy-centric, and for something mega out of the norm of what i write, I'm fairly happy with how it turned out._

_Lyrics that influence this fic the most- "It's so hard, just waiting, in a line that never moves. It's time you started making your own rules" "You gotta scream until there's nothing left with your lats breath. Say Here I am, here I am! Make 'em listen! 'Cause there's no way you'll be ignored, Not anymore." "You only get one life to work it so who cares if it's not perfect?" "If how you're living isn't working there's one thing that'll help. You got to finally just stop searching, to find yourself"  


* * *

_

Lucy could do nothing but politely refuse in her life. It wasn't that she didn't care or that she didn't love everything that had been handed to her all this time, but she felt it was time she stepped up and really made a difference somewhere.

She didn't have any intentions of changing when she left. She wasn't going to get into the parties or the drugs, not right away. She wasn't her brother, or sisters, or Daniel, or Jude, or anyone else. But she needed to be let out of the sheltered life for a while. She wanted to work, and she needed to be heard.

Then Max got recruited. Max had gone off to the same place the killed her Daniel. No matter what she believed, or what Jude or anyone else said, nothing could change that. Two of the people she cared the most for were getting lost to this war. And there was nothing she could do.

So what harm would these rallies cause? What was wrong with wanting people to get radical and do something real? Even then, even with these movements, it was nothing. But she had to try.

Why couldn't Jude understand that? He cared just as much. He had to. He had to care about her, and her family, and maybe he did just want her to be safe with him, but she'd spent too long being a little girl. The war forced people to grow up. That's what it did to Max and Daniel and every other young man out there that was declared fit to die.

She wasn't forced to grow up just yet. Not in that way. She wasn't forced to scream out to the world and stand in the streets and fight for what was right. But she needed to. She didn't have to be just another face, another hippie protester. But she had to stand there with all the strength and emotion that she could and do everything in her power to make a difference.


	3. Chapter 3

_Number 3:_

_Song- Morning Glory by Oasis_

_A.N- Sadie! Hm, I'm not really gonna comment how off the characterization is, because i'm trying to pull her angsty (go figure) This CAN be the part most people will assume, her and Jojo's fight on stage, or it can be something very pre-ATU. I haven't really decided. its really short, but I got nothin' more to say. Also, this is an amazingly deep song, and I'm being fairly literal with it and conveying the words rather than the meaning. Well....yeah._

_Lyrics that influence this fic the most- "All your dreams are made when your chained to the mirror with your razor blade" "Today's the day that all the world will see" "Walkin' to the sound of my favorite tune" "Tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know to soon."

* * *

_

She ran into the dressing room –if you could call it that- with tears streaming down her face, smearing lines into her makeup. She grabbed the first thing she could find and chucked it hard as she could into the mirror. She was deaf to the collision, blind to the metal and glass shattering around her.

He could he? How the hell could he?! It was supposed to be great; supposed to be wonderful. This is what she's been working for all this time. She thought he was too. But people could be wrong. It was as if all her wildest fantasy shattered with that mirror, and now here she was, down to the brinks of being nothing.

And she could still hear that damn song!


	4. Chapter 4

_Number 4:_

_Song- Welcome To The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance_

_A.N- FINALLY I get to post one of my Max-centric ones! Sorry for the long time no update. Also, I use the title of the song in the end for lack of ideas, and the overall mood of the drabble is based on the rise and fall of the song. The calm, then the bang, then the massive overlay... Yeah. I know, I'm totally normal... Huge shout out to Bookish for reviewing and being super awesome like that. ;) _

_Lyrics that influence this fic the most- "He said, "Son when you grow up, will you be the saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned?"" "Sometimes I get the feeling, she's watching over me. And other times I feel like I should go. And through it all, the rise and fall, the bodies in the street-" "The disappointed faces of your peers....Take a look at me 'cause I could not care at all" "Do or die-You'll never make me" "I'm just a man; I'm not a hero. Just a boy, whose meant to sing this song. I'm just a man; I'm not a hero. I Don't Care"_

* * *

It was so easy to tell them apart. There were those that wanted to be here, trained soldiers eager to serve their country. There were those that didn't, terrified clueless young boys. And there were those that could have been either, but up until five seconds ago they had no idea what they were up against. Max Carrigan was a proud member of option three.

So maybe a little of it was exaggeration. He'd knew enough about the real word; he knew people died and he that he probably wasn't going to joke around and learn to box and all that jazz. But he hadn't expected to be dropped off in a jungle, handed a gun, and just a little bit later hear a loud boom and watch a smoky eruption of something explosive.

"Just keep moving," they'd said. "Walk in a line and get to the base and watch each other's backs," or something like that. Never in his life did Max take direction well, but he honestly would have liked a little more guidance, even if this was a dire circumstance that happened to cut short training and send everyone that actually knew what they were doing to the fields right away, leaving those who didn't in this little fix.

If there was a mirror in front of him, he'd curse his eyes, simply because he had no way of reducing their size to anything less than the saucers of a fearful child first seeing the wonders of the wide world. In all honesty, that was quite the way he felt.

For the first few agonizingly slow minutes, or maybe it was many quick passing ones, there was nothing but the group and the forest. Then someone in the front tripped over something, and everyone looked down into the thick swampy floor. There were dead bodies. A lot of dead bodies. And they weren't just dead; they were disturbingly bloodied with twisted expressions and pain and mangled limbs. That was the nice way to put it.

Someone turned and threw up violently. Nobody blamed him, because half of them looked ready to do the same, and it was a wonder some people could gather their bearings and hold up their guns and march on. Apparently this area wasn't as serene and untouched as it appeared.

Not everyone was dead. Max took note of that. He took note of a little Vietnamese girl, no more than eight years old, on the floor, whimpering, dying. He took note of that fact that they couldn't do anything, and they simply had to walk away, and the last thing she'd ever see would be these evil American troops, her murders. This was the kind of stuff that caused damage. Even after they walked away, he could still see her face.

And the only thing that made it go away was the boom. Whether it was a gunshot, explosion, or some kind of a call or warning nobody seemed to know. People took off, doing what they were supposed to do at this given moment. Max didn't know. He didn't know how they knew. But everything from that moment on was nothing more than a timeless blur of a black parade.


End file.
